High-profile lobbyist helps choose Beehive staff
Wednesday, 15 November 2023
A high profile lobbyist is helping to select the staff who will advise Christopher Luxon’s incoming Cabinet.
Wayne Eagleson - a director of political consulting firm Thompson Lewis - is sitting on a panel interviewing candidates who hope to be aides to National’s new ministers.
Negotiations are underway with likely support parties ACT and NZ First about the shape of the next Government, which means those Ministers are yet to be appointed.
But The Post has learned Eagleson, former chief of staff to Prime Ministers John Key and Bill English, has interviewed about 15 hopefuls for prized Beehive jobs in the last few weeks.
With Justice Ministry officials working on how to regulate the lobbying industry, Eagleson’s role in the formation of the next Government is likely to raise eyebrows.
Although much less influential, it echoes the appointment of Thompson Lewis founder Gordon Jon Thompson, who helped incoming Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern establish her new administration in 2017.
For five months he was interim chief of staff, involved in the appointment of more than 100 ministerial staff, and with access to Cabinet papers and other sensitive material.
Thompson then returned to the firm he founded with David Lewis, former chief press secretary to Prime Minister Helen Clark, to lobby the Government on behalf of private and corporate clients.
A spokesperson for Luxon confirmed Eagleson is “playing a small, advisory role interviewing a limited number of potential staff as part of a panel. Mr Eagleson is not involved in any decision-making.”
Asked how any conflict of interest is being managed, particularly with regards to Eagleson’s future lobbying work, the spokesperson said: “Any conflicts will be managed appropriately.”
Eagleson is one of the most experienced Beehive back room operatives.
Key inherited him from Don Brash when he became leader of the opposition, and he was a pivotal figure under the former National-led Government, described by his former boss as the country’s “most influential unelected official.”
Once a senior adviser to Prime Minister Jim Bolger in the 1990s, he has also worked in senior positions at Transpower, Westpac and DB Breweries.
He quit the Beehive after the 2017 election, but stuck around to help National’s coalition talks with NZ First, which ultimately failed.
Eagleson told The Post he is working for free, because he believed he had skills and experience to contribute.
He is helping to select candidates who will enter a pool to be selected by the new Cabinet as ministerial advisers. The process - also followed in 2017 and in 2008 - allows ministers to get to work quickly.
“They asked if I would lend a hand…Over the years, I've hired a lot, and I know the sort of the skills and experience they're looking for and I understand how ministerial offices operate.”
He stressed he’d been involved in only a small number of interviews. Overall, about 160 staff will be hired.
As one of the best-connected consultants in Wellington, it’s unlikely this role would give Eagleson access and influence he doesn’t already wield.
“I’ve been around Wellington a long time and I know all the people in the incoming PM’s office. I value my integrity and my reputation. The idea that I would do something that would let myself down, let alone anybody else, I think is wrong.
“We expect people on on all sides of these things to act professionally. Because otherwise, you get to the point where someone like me - and I think I have got something to contribute - can't do that, under any circumstances. I'm not totally convinced that our system is served by that.
“It was something that I could do to help and I think the country is served by actually getting really good ministerial advisers in there.”
Earlier this year, officials were tasked with working on a voluntary code for lobbyists and other options for for regulating the industry. It’s not yet clear whether that work will continue under the incoming Government.